Wednesday, October 6, 2010

In 1940, the NHL Board of Governors eliminated the requirement that only jersey numbers 1-19 be allowed to designate player in NHL games.

And for that we thank them.

Eventually, Guillaume Latendresse of the Montreal Canadiens became the first player in NHL history to wear #84 when he made his Montreal Canadiens regular season debut on this date in 2006.

With Latendresse donning the #84, it meant that every number from 0 to 99 had finally been worn in the NHL, and on that occasion Sports Illustrated commemorated the event with a list of the best players ever to have worn each number.

Obviously some numbers had an incredible amount of contenders and debate (#9), while others had simply no competition (#69) and were won by default. As you consider the list, also remember it was complied four seasons ago, and there may have been other worthy contenders emerge since then.

The Top 101

00 John Davidson

0 Neil Sheehy

1 Terry Sawchuk

2 Doug Harvey

3 Lionel Hitchman

4 Bobby Orr

5 Denis Potvin

6 Toe Blake

7 Howie Morenz

8 Cam Neely

9 Gordie Howe

10 Guy Lafleur

11 Mark Messier

12 Dickie Moore

13 Mats Sundin

14 Brendan Shanahan

15 Milt Schmidt

16 Marcel Dionne

17 Jari Kurri

18 Serge Savard

19 Steve Yzerman

20 Luc Robitaille

21 Stan Mikita

22 Mike Bossy

23 Bob Gainey

24 Chris Chelios

25 Joe Nieuwendyk

26 Peter Stastny

27 Frank Mahovlich

28 Steve Larmer

29 Ken Dryden

30 Martin Brodeur

31 Grant Fuhr

32 Dale Hunter

33 Patrick Roy

34 John Vanbiesbrouck

35 Tony Esposito

36 Daniel Bouchard

37 Olaf Kolzig

38 Vladimir Malakhov

39 Dominik Hasek

40 Alex Tanguay

41 Stu Barnes

42 Sergei Makarov

43 Patrice Brisebois

44 Chris Pronger

45 Rhett Warriner

46 Kyle McLaren

47 Marc-Andre Bergeron

48 Scott Young

49 Brian Savage

50 Igor Ulanov

51 Andrei Kovalenko

52 Adam Foote

53 Derek Morris

54 Sean Pronger

55 Larry Murphy

56 Sergei Zubov

57 Steve Heinze

58 Bill Berg

59 Tom Fitzgerald

60 Jose Theodore

61 Maxim Afinogenov

62 Olli Jokinen

63 Josef Vasicek

64 Sylvain Cote

65 Tim Hunter

66 Mario Lemieux

67 Robert Svehla

68 Jaromir Jagr

69 Mel Angelstad

70 Oleg Tverdovsky

71 Mike Foligno

72 Mathieu Schneider

73 Michael Ryder

74 Jay McKee

75 Walt Poddubny

76 Radek Bonk

77 Ray Bourque

78 Pavol Demitra

79 Alexei Yashin

80 Geoff Sanderson

81 Miroslav Satan

82 Marian Gaborik

83 Ales Hemsky

84 Guillaume Latendresse

85 Petr Klima

86 Jonathan Ferland

87 Sidney Crosby

88 Eric Lindros

89 Alexander Mogilny

90 Joe Juneau

91 Sergei Fedorov

92 Rick Tocchet

93 Doug Gilmour

94 Ryan Smyth

95 Aleksey Morozov

96 Tomas Holmstrom

97 Jeremy Roenick

98 Brian Lawton

99 Wayne Gretzky

Don't agree with any? Post your choices in the comments below and let the debate begin...

I would have gone with Mark Napier for #65, because it has a great back story.

Interestingly, Napier finished his career wearing jersey #65 back when such NASCAR numbers were not so common place. Since his favored #9 was already in use courtesy of Danny Gare, Napier chose 65 because of his involvement with the charitable Cystic Fibrosis Foundation where he was an honorary chairman. The terrible disease is often mispronounced by its youngest victims as Sixty Five Roses, leading to the annual fundraising and awareness campaign by the same tagline. Napier brought further attention to the cause by donning the jersey number.

Our aim is to feature a different jersey each day from a historical perspective. Stay tuned and hopefully you'll see some jerseys of interest or perhaps some that you haven't seen before and learn a bit of hockey history along the way.

In addition to our articles, be sure to scroll down this column and explore the other fun and informative features of this blog.

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